The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

by Maggie O'Farrell

Set between the 1930s,and the present, Maggie O`Farrell`s new novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family`s history, and of the secrets that come to light when, sixty years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had. The mystery that unfolds is the heartbreaking tale of two sisters in colonial India and 1930s Edinburgh - of the loneliness that binds them together and the rivalries that drive them apart, and lead one of them to a shocking betrayal - but above all it is the story of Esme, a fiercely intelligent, unconventional young woman, and of the terrible price she is made to pay for her family`s unhappiness. This is vintage Maggie O`Farrell: an impassioned, intense, haunting family drama - a stunning imagining of a life stolen, and reclaimed.

(From Publisher)

Maggie O’Farrell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She now lives in Edinburgh with her family. Her debut novel, After You’d Gone, was published to international acclaim, and won a Betty Trask Award, while her third, The Distance Between Us, won the 2005 Somerset Maugham Award.